I-Space (Chinese company)

i-Space —also known as Space Honor, Beijing Interstellar Glory Space Technology Ltd., Interstellar Glory or StarCraft Glory —is a Chinese private space technology development and space launch company based in Beijing, founded in October 2016.

The company is developing two-stage small satellite orbital launchers based on solid propellant rocket engines procured from major Chinese government supplier China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CAST).

In July 2019, i-Space successfully launched the Hyperbola-1 and reached low Earth orbit on its maiden flight, becoming the first private company from China to achieve orbit. The company's next three orbital launch attempts (two in 2021 and one in 2022) using the same launch vehicle all ended in failure. But a return to success in orbital launches with the Hyperbola-1 followed in 2023 when the company conducted a successful test launch with no payload in April of that year and continued with a December 2023 launch that placed the DEAR-1 satellite in an SSO orbit.

History
The company was founded in 2016.

By 2019, i-Space had successfully launched the Hyperbola-1S and Hyperbola-1Z single-stage solid-propellant test rockets into space on suborbital test flights, and then reached low Earth orbit with Hyperbola-1 on its maiden flight on 25 July 2019, becoming the first private company from China to have achieved orbit.

The company raised US$173 million in private capital in a series B round during 2020.

Suborbital rockets: Hyperbola-1S and Hyperbola-1Z
The Hyperbola-1S (also called SQX-1S), and the Hyperbola-1Z (also called SQX-1Z), are single stage, solid-propellant suborbital test rockets. The Hyperbola-1S rocket was 8.4 m long, with a diameter of 1 m and weighed 4.6 tonne. The Hyperbola-1Z rocket has a diameter of about 1.4 m, maximum design speed of 1.6 km/s and can reach altitude of 175 km on a suborbital trajectory.

The first sub-orbital test flight of Hyperbola-1S took place from Hainan island on 5 April 2018 to an altitude of 108 km.

The second flight of i-Space was a commercial sub-orbital flight launched on 5 September 2018 from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi desert, using the Hyperbola-1Z rocket. The sub-orbital flight reached an altitude of 108 km and a peak velocity of over 1200 m/s. It carried payloads from private Chinese satellite companies ZeroG Labs and ADA-space. The rocket delivered three CubeSat satellites one of which subsequently parachuted back to Earth.

Hyperbola-1
The Hyperbola-1 (aka Shuang Quxian-1, SQX-1) (Chinese: 双曲线一号) rocket is 20.8 m tall, 1.4 m in diameter and weighs 31 tonne. It consists of four all solid fuel stages, guided by liquid fuel attitude control engines. It can launch 300 kg into low Earth orbit (LEO). The rocket might be based on Chinese military missiles (perhaps DF-11 or DF-15). The first stage of the rocket is equipped with four grid fins. The launch price is reported around US$5 million.

Its successful maiden flight was on 25 July 2019, at 05:00 UTC from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. It launched from a movable supporting platform. It placed numerous payloads, among them the CAS-7B amateur radio satellite, into orbit 300 km above Earth. CAS-7B decayed from orbit 6 August 2019. It was the first Chinese private company to achieve orbit (orbital launches of other private companies before had failed).

A second launch occurred on 1 February 2021, at 08:15 UTC (16:15 Beijing Time) from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center with 6 unidentified satellites but failed to reach orbit. A subsequent investigation revealed that a piece of insulation had broken off and got stuck in the turning mechanism of grid fin Number IV. When the piece was blown away, the control system then suddenly overcompensated, resulting in the rocket being ripped apart by excessive aerodynamic forces. The rocket was named "Tianshu" because its outer fuselage was covered with the artistic creations (images of compound made-up Chinese characters) of the contemporary artist Xu Bing.

iSpace launched a third Hyperbola-1 solid-rocket vehicle on 3 August 2021. SpaceNews was reporting the same day that the outcome of the launch was unknown, but that amateur video of the launch had been posted, but then deleted from Chinese social media. After most of the day had passed, the Chinese official media Xinhua reported that the launch was unsuccessful due to off-nominal performance of the rocket which resulted in a failure to achieve orbit. An official statement released by the company itself the following day clarified that the failure was caused by a malfunctioning in the fairing separation process, that precluded the payload from reaching the target orbit. A fourth launch attempt on May 13, 2022, was unsuccessful as well.

In April 2023, i-Space performed a fifth launch of the Hyperbola-1 which successfully reached orbit without a payload (or possibly a dummy payload), and then followed with another launch on 17 December 2023 that placed the DEAR-1 satellite from Chinese company Azspace into a 500 kilometre SSO orbit.

Hyperbola-2
The Hyperbola-2 (Chinese: 双曲线二号) is a two-stage, liquid-fueled, reusable rocket designed to lift 1.9 tons into LEO. It features the JD-1 engine which employs methane as fuel and liquid oxygen as the oxidizer. The first stage is expected to land propulsively in order to be reused. The rocket's JD-1 engine had its first hot fire test in May 2020. As of July 2022, the first launch was expected to occur in 2023 following a series of first stage hop tests. In July 2023 i-Space announced that it has decided to suspend further development of the Hyperbola-2 launcher and instead directly proceed with the development of the reusable medium-lift Hyperbola-3 rocket.

Hyperbola-3
The Hyperbola-3 is a 69 metres tall two-stage, liquid-fueled, partially reusable rocket; it is designed to lift at least 8.5 tons into LEO in reusable mode and 13.4 tons in expendable mode. The rocket's engines will use methane as fuel and liquid oxygen as the oxidizer. The first stage of the rocket is expected to land vertically using landing legs. The rocket will use the Focus-1 restartable methalox engine which was flight-verified during a hop test by the Hyperbola-2Y test stage on 2 November 2023, during which the test vehicle reached a maximum height of 178.42 m. (A second successful test of the Hyperbola-2Y test vehicle took place on 10 December 2023 with the stage reaching a height of about 343 metres and translating a horizontal distance of about 50 metres. ) i-Space is targeting a first flight of the expendable Hyperbola-3 for 2025, while an attempt at first-stage vertical landing and recovery is slated for 2026; a heavy-lift 3-core variant named the Hyperbola-3B is also planned by the company.

Other developments
In May 2018, i-Space indicated they hoped to eventually develop a reusable sub-orbital spaceplane (Chinese: 亚轨道概念飞行器) for space tourism.

Marketplace
i-Space is in competition with several other Chinese space rocket startups, being LandSpace, Galactic Energy, ExPace, LinkSpace, OneSpace and Deep Blue Aerospace.